Study: Discharging Transgender Troops Would Cost $960 Million

By

Carlos Santoscoy

|
August 11, 2017

According to a new study released
Tuesday, discharging transgender troops would cost the United States
$960 million.

In a series of tweets late last month,
Trump declared that the military will no longer “accept or allow”
transgender troops to serve “in any capacity.” The president
said that the ban was needed to avoid “tremendous medical costs and
disruption” posed by transgender people serving in the military.

But researchers at the Palm Center, a
think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara that
studies LGBT issues as they relate to the military, concluded that
firing transgender troops would be 100 times more costly than
providing for their health care needs.

“Our analysis, which is intended to
support public discussion of an important national policy issue,
suggests that the direct and indirect costs associated with
implementing an order to discharge all transgender military
personnel, as tweeted by President Trump on July 26, 2017, would be
$960 million,” researchers
wrote.

“We arrived at our estimate by
multiplying the number of currently serving transgender service
members by the cost of recruiting and training replacements.”

“Given that the cost of providing
medically necessary transition related care to transgender personnel
is, at most, $8.4 million per year, the $960 million price tag for
fully implementing President Trump's ban is more than 100 times
greater than the annual cost of retaining transgender service members
and providing for their health care needs,” they concluded.